KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Afghan authorities have arrested three American citizens accused of running a fake prison in Kabul, U.S. State Department and Afghan officials say.

Afghan government officials raided a rented house in the capital late Sunday where the three Americans lived. They found a private prison inside the building that contained eight prisoners, a Ministry of Interior official said Friday.

The raid came after Afghan citizens reported their family members missing over the past several months.

At a news briefing Thursday, State Dept. spokesman Richard Boucher identified all three as American citizens, noting "the U.S. government does not employ or sponsor these men."

He identified two of the men as Jonathan Idema and Brent Bennett, but could not release the name of the third because he had not signed a Privacy Act waiver.

Idema and his colleagues told Afghan authorities they were operating the prison because they wanted "to take part in the war on terror," the Afghan official said.

The Americans did not torture their prisoners, but did administer "some beatings," the official added.

The three men are being interrogated by Afghanistan's intelligence agency. They are not being held in prison but in a residential area.

The eight prisoners are also being debriefed by the agency, and the government is trying to find several Afghans who were allegedly helping the Americans, the official said.

The arrests came as the U.S. military investigated allegations of detainee abuse in Afghanistan at the hands of American jailers.

That investigation was prompted by outrage after photographs of abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison captured international media attention.

Boucher said officials from U.S. consular offices in Kabul visited the Americans on Tuesday and Thursday.

When asked if they were being treated fairly, he responded "we're monitoring their welfare."

Idema and his colleagues rented the house near Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel, and told neighbors that they were operating an export company that traded Afghan rugs, the Afghan official said.

The Americans were mainly detaining men with long beards on the outskirts of Kabul who they suspected -- based on their appearance -- to be members of al Qaeda, the interior ministry official said.

Idema and his two colleagues would then interrogate the prisoners in an attempt to get them to confess they were members of the terrorist network, the official said.​

It makes sense to me. It is the logical conclusion of the privatization of the military. We have to let these "free market" forces work to their natural conclusions and let the market sort our who is the better, most economical, and therefore more morally correct choice for conducting this war. I'm sure private jails are superior than those paid for by the government. If not they will quickly fail to entice their guests to stay and lose out to those better suited to torture efficiently. I don't understand your complaints, folks?

A freelance American bounty hunter who claimed to have been on the trail of Osama bin Laden has been arrested in Afghanistan for allegedly torturing prisoners after they were found dangling upside down in a private cell.

The men were found by Afghan security services after they seized Jonathan K Idema, one of Kabul's best-known characters. Mr Idema, referred to as Jack around the city, two other Americans and four Afghans were held following a brief shoot-out at a house in the capital on Monday.

The Interior Minister, Ali Ahmad Jalali, said the men had "formed a group and pretended they were fighting terrorism. They arrested eight people from across Kabul and put them in their jail". The prisoners had been released, Mr Jalali said.

Mr Idema is an American soldier of fortune who helped the Northern Alliance overthrow the Taliban in 2001. He claims to have trained with the SAS in Britain.

According to his account, he arrived in the country in the winter of 2001 to play a major part alongside Afghan guerrillas fighting the Taliban and al-Qa'ida. His exploits were written about in a blood-curdling paperback, Taskforce Dagger; Hunt for Bin Laden, which details the campaign by American special forces inside Afghanistan in the months after 11 September.

The book says that Mr Idema, originally from North Carolina, joined the Green Berets at the age of 18 in 1975, just missing service in the Vietnam War, then later trained with British SAS forces at the regiment's base in Hereford.

His links to the US military and exact role in the campaign are a murky area. The book quotes the veteran US television journalist Dan Rather, who met Mr Idema in Afghanistan, describing him as "politically incorrect, abrasive, unconventional, and unquestionably heroic". Mr Idema says he almost captured Bin Laden during the siege at al-Qa'ida's Tora Bora cave hideout in December 2001.

But yesterday his buccaneering career appeared to have juddered to a halt and he was thought to be under interrogation by Afghan police, possibly in the city's notorious Waliat Jail. Hours before his arrest, the American military portrayed Mr Idema as a loose cannon. A spokeswoman said: "The public should be aware that Idema does not represent the American government and we do not employ him."

An unnamed Afghan official said that after the shootout with Idema and his men, the prisoners were found in a house that had been turned into a makeshift jail. They were hanging upside down and had been beaten. The men reportedly sported the bushy beards favoured by Islamic radicals, but it appeared they had no links to terrorism.

The other foreigners arrested said they were Edward Caraballo and Brent Bennett, but it was not clear whether these were their real names. Afghan officials said the men had been tailed by security forces before being seized in a house behind a wall topped with barbed wire in a run-down Kabul suburb.

The foreigners had claimed to be working for an export company, but were arrested wearing military uniforms and armed with automatic weapons. It was not clear whether they had been charged last night.

Mr Idema was said to have spent much of his time in recent weeks at a Kabul hotel, The Mustapha. It is popular with aid workers, UN staff, journalists and the trickle of tourists beginning to arrive in the city. One Afghan shopkeeper said: "He [Mr Idema] was always friendly and used to chat. He was interested in the culture and history of Afghanistan."

The US military in Afghanistan has itself been dogged by a prison abuse scandal mirroring the one in Iraq, with claims that prisoners died under interrogation.​

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Curiouser and curiouser. How many of these guys are out there? How much does the US know about them?

This all reminds me of a few stories from back in the Afghan/Soviet War days where people could act out their fantasies admidst the "lawless frontier" of Peshewar/Northern Frontier...examples:

1) Koshiro Tanaka...a struggling Japanese businessman in his late-40's who had a sixth-degree black belt in karate. He believed that "since WWII, there has not been an honorable way for a Japanese man to die in the true Samurai spirit."

He set up shop in Peshewar and trained hundreds of Guerillas in hand-to-hand combat. Went on Rambo-style missions into Afghanistan, equipped with a Kalashnikov rifle, three tourniquets (as he commented "if all my limbs are cut, I am finished") and at least two grenades...one for throwing at the enemy, the other for killing himself (because " me being captured would be a diplomatic embarrasment to Japan."). He was still trying to kill a Russian w/ his bare hands.

2) An East-German refugee in his late-20's who came to Pakistan to "settle a score w/ the Russians". Had originally emigrated to West Germany after a brief stint in Prison for trying to scale the Berlin Wall. The East German government would not let him communicate w/ the rest of his family still in East Germany.

So he moved to Pakistan, converted to Islam and learned Puktu (afghani tongue). Fought alongside mujaddin, until he transferred to running the German Humanitarian Service in Afghanistan.

3)A London window-cleaner whose father bought him a one-way ticket to Peshewar. Around the local bars he would casually mention that he had "always wanted to kill someone".

Eventually he went on a "mission" w/ an obscure guerilla group, and was allowed to pull the trigger on a rocket-laucher aimed at a tent full of Afghan regime soldiers. After the explosion and the sight of the dead bodies, he flew home to London, his wife paying the ticket fare.

Point being, I feel a lot of "soldier of Fortune" types take it upon themselves to "fix the problem", or to just satisfy some urges.

From what I have heard, mercenaries are not particularily welcome, as Afghanis have no concept of paying someone to fight, although perhaps the ISI might...I will wonder about this for a while...very strange.

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